Outstanding Directors 2024: Ruth Kimmelshue
A member of Cargill’s executive team, Ruth Kimmelshue did a careful analysis before joining the H.B. Fuller board in 2017.
She posed three questions to herself, the first being: What can I uniquely bring to the board?
“I’ve spent my entire career in a global company of scale and size,” Kimmelshue says, so she wanted to share with H.B. Fuller’s board the breadth of experiences, capabilities, and best practices that she’s been exposed to over her long career with Continental Grain and Cargill.
For example, she says, she’s organized around global supply chains and tailored operational capabilities so a company can execute successfully by region. In addition, Kimmelshue says, “I bring things like an understanding of global markets, an understanding of foreign exchange, and risk management capabilities.”
That global experience translates to St. Paul-based H.B. Fuller, which defines itself as “the largest pure play adhesives company in the world.” Its fiscal 2023 revenue was $3.5 billion.
At Cargill, Kimmelshue says, executive team members can each serve on one board, which must be approved by senior leadership and Cargill’s board of directors.
Before joining H.B. Fuller’s board, the second question that Kimmelshue asked herself was: What professional development would the board service provide? She had met with the board of privately held Cargill, but she didn’t have public board experience. Reflecting on her H.B. Fuller service, she says, “I got a crash course in public company governance.”
Early on, she was able to “sit, listen, and learn” from two board veterans—Lee Mitau and Bill Van Sant. She observed what the board members thought about governance and how they impacted the company.
The third question Kimmelshue asked herself focused on what she could bring back to Cargill after serving on the H.B. Fuller board.
While some business leaders contend that public companies are under too much pressure to produce strong results every quarter, Kimmelshue has a positive take about that expectation.
“Public companies tend to have a greater sense of urgency,” she says. “In my world here at Cargill, [that attitude] has been super-valuable.” In particular, she explains the importance of “bringing some of that sense of urgency for results, for metrics, for understanding when we need to pivot, when we need to be a bit more agile.”
In her current role at Cargill, Kimmelshue is the corporate senior vice president of the global animal nutrition and health enterprise. She grew up in northern California on an almond farm, and her agribusiness career has spanned 38 years. Now she oversees about 12,000 employees who work in more than 40 countries. This portion of Cargill’s business generates about $15 billion a year.
“Her background is absolutely perfect for a company like ours,” says Mitau, an attorney and H.B. Fuller’s board chair since 2006.
Five men and four women currently serve on H.B. Fuller’s board. When Kimmelshue joined the board, she says only one other woman was a board director. But she believed that Mitau and then-CEO Jim Owens would make good on their pledges to increase diverse representation on the board.
“The richness of the conversation at the board level [today] is really strong—I firmly believe—because of the diversity that we have sitting around the table,” she says.
In September 2022, Mitau gave Kimmelshue what he characterizes as a “battlefield promotion” after a member left the board unexpectedly.
“I turned to Ruth,” he says. “Without much notice, she was elevated to the compensation committee chair. To her credit, she has done a phenomenal job.”
Her selection was somewhat unusual, because Kimmelshue lacked experience as a public company executive. But “I knew she knew a great deal about compensation,” Mitau says.
“She had to develop a comp package for a new CEO right away,” he says, because the board had recently completed a lengthy search for a successor for Owens.
The board chose Celeste Mastin, who had an extensive background in manufacturing and distribution. In early 2022, she joined H.B. Fuller as COO and months later transitioned to CEO.
Kimmelshue says she appreciates Mastin’s desire to take H.B. Fuller to a new level. “Her question for us was: Is H.B. Fuller the old, traditional adhesives company, or do you as a board have aspirations to do something new and different, and to continue to expand, explore and innovate?”
While H.B. Fuller pursues a growth trajectory, Kimmelshue says that Mastin is “doing a remarkable job.”
Other Board Service
Wayne Sanderson Farms (2022–present)
Luther Seminary (2020–present)
